Some members needed to be assured that Congress is not being asked to sanction the interference with life after it has once begun, but merely to free the knowledge as to how the starting of new human life may be controlled. This distinction relieved many Senatorial minds. A fairly frequent worry among the Congressmen has been “race suicide,” but they seemed relieved when told such facts as that Holland, with its fifty-two birth control clinics and its established contraceptive instruction which has been going on for more than forty years, had—up to the war—the second highest ratio of increase in population in Europe. A somewhat common type of Senator is he who fears that making contraceptive knowledge legally accessible will result in its abuse, particularly by the young. But he usually responds quite nobly to such queries as: “If young people are safe only when ignorant, what happens when somehow they get knowledge, as may occur any moment?” “If American young people, as a whole, are prone to go to the devil as fast as they acquire an understanding of this subject, whose fault is it?” “What is the matter with us elders who have reared them so poorly?” “Isn’t knowledge on all subjects capable of abuse, and doesn’t safety lie on the far side, not on the near side, of education?” However, the attitude of the large majority of those interviewed is fairly represented by the letter President Harding wrote when he was a member of the Senate Health Committee, in which he said, “I have not had time to study carefully the provisions of your bill, but at first reading find myself very much in its favor.” The one most arresting fact which the Congressmen were asked to face, and which none could deny, was that Congress itself, like any other group of well-to-do men in the United States, already represents the achievement of family limitation despite the laws. The “Who’s Who” section of the Congressional Directory does not report Congressmen with families of eight, ten or twelve. Quite otherwise.